Week 1: We Can Do It and I Can Sing!

Theater: The Musical successfully opened last weekend. Our houses Thursday and Friday were on the lean side, but Saturday sold out, which is great for opening weekend. I came away from the weekend with two nuggets of incite.

First off, we can do this show and do it well. Thursday’s Mamet was definitely the rockiest, but it was the first night and happened to be the cast least suited to doing Mamet well. Tara excelled, but everyone else seemed a bit at sea. Even so, it was a solid show. Friday night we nailed Eugene O’Neil right down to his darkly depressing core, and Saturday night we did a highly entertaining Neil Simon. There was some room for improvement on the Simon, but I’m not sure we could do a better O’Neil. Maybe if we sung less in the first half. Either way, I’m convinced now that we can take any playwright the audience gives us and do an entertaining and satisfying show, even for playwrights we’ve never heard of (I’ve never read any O’Neil).

Secondly, I had a bit of an epiphany in regards to my singing. I’ve started listening to the music more closely, mostly as a way to not listen to the sound of my own voice. When I’m focusing on the music, I can harmonize more naturally and singing feels easier. When I’m paying too much attention to the notes I’m singing, I get too self conscious and singing gets really difficult. I’ll have to see how that works moving forward.

Here are little summaries of each of last weekend’s shows:

Thursday: Don’t Screw Up! – in the style of David Mamet
Miss P (Laurie) hires competing photographers to follow her ex-lover Laroue (Mandy), but one of them (Susan) double crosses her. The slow-witted Tina (Tara) figures it out and spells doom for Laroue’s double (Larry). In the end, Miss P discovers that Laroue was right under her nose the entire time.



Friday: The End of the Play – in the style of Eugene O’Neil
Aspiring author Tim (Alan) struggles to break free from his overbearing family. His father (Karen), an alcoholic washed up actor, uses the young Mary (Debra) to recapture some of his youth, while Tim’s younger brother Robert (Christian) resentfully fills the void left by their dead mother.


Saturday: Big Plans – in the style of Neil Simon
Christopher (Christian) has gotten into UCLA, but his mother Rachel (Tara) doesn’t want any of her children to leave their home in New York City. Meanwhile Chris’s father (Alan) is so eager for his kids to move out, he’s started turning Chris’s bedroom into a solarium, complete with fully grown corn. Will Chris and his sister Kathy (Laurie) finally have the courage to stand up to their mother?

Rehearsal #10: The Office by Beckett

We ran another entire show last night in rehearsal. This time I played instead of watching. We even had a little audience composed of the half of the cast that played last Wednesday, Shaun Landry (who was just visiting) and an extra musician. Actually we had Joshua play music for the first half of rehearsal, and new musician Kevin play for the second half.

Our playwright, suggested by Joshua, was Beckett. Fortunately I’ve just read a lot of Beckett and even recently posted my synopsis of his elements. I was all set. Susan was terrified, but she still dived in head first.

I can’t even begin to describe how much fun it was. I hope we get Beckett again on a night I’m performing so I can explore some other aspects of him. The show itself took place in an office conference room. Susan’s character was obviously lowest on the totem poll, somewhat rebellious, and had a fascination with her hand. I played Sebastian, who was onstage for the entire show! He was the next man up on the chain of command and spent most of the show deliberately moving two chairs into place in the center of the conference room. Christian played middle-management-man who did nothing but spout corporate buzz words. Laurie played the gender ambiguous boss. Debrah played a customer. We sold vacuums. The play ended when I choked Christian to death.

All that makes it sound way more normal than it actually was. Again, words fail me at Beckett’s brilliance and how much fun it was to improvise in his style. I understand why 90% of people think Beckett is rubbish, but there’s a reason he’s famous. The other 10% of us think he’s ripping brilliant (and soooo funny).